Sunday, January 20, 2008

Probability in SL

Another project I began working on is a project to test probability in SL. For this purpose, I began constructing a die. The die is perfectly balanced...a cube, 2meters on each side. Then the cube has nine dots. Each dot is equidistant from each other and from the edge of the cube. Each dot is actually .3 meters in diameter, and is .01 meters thick. The nine dots are arranged in 3 rows of 3. I colored the dots black, but tomorrow I will proceed to make some of them transparent so that the die will have six faces with 1,2,3,4,5,6 dots...like all dice. My goal will be to test whether the die really behaves as if it were perfectly balanced (as it should), or whether somehow the die (or SL) is 'loaded'.

Lastly, I did some chromatography experiments again..I made a larger gel which I put inside a column and then I ran some balls down the gel (to simulate atoms). I found that even the smallest balls would get stuck on the polymer of the gels. I am not sure why they are sticking this way. Larger balls would get stuck as well. So, I am going to simplify this set up. I am going to make an array of posts, and run the balls down the array of posts, to see how they behave. This is much like Bob Austin's DNA electrophoreses microdevice. Bob is a Princeton University physics professor, and about ten years ago published a paper about separating DNA fragments of different size using a microfabricated device consisting of vertical posts or pillars.